"I understand that perfectly," Charles Abbott assured her; "and I cannot beg you to stay. Whatever your motive was, your value to us has been beyond any payment. If our movement had a saint, you would fill that place."
She laughed, "A strange saint in a mantón and slippers with painted heels."
"Much better," Charles replied, "than many of those in sanctified robes. I had the feeling, too," he proceeded, "that our usefulness together was coming to an end." It seemed to him that again she had become the glorified figure of the stage, his dislike for her actuality, her flesh, vanished, leaving only profound admiration.
"I am amazed," she said, in a lingering half humorous resentment, "that you never loved me, I never brought you a regret or a longing or made any trouble in your heart."
"That was because I put you so high," he explained. She raised her shoulders and objected that it was late for compliments.
"Be honest--you didn't care for me. You ought to be very successful, you have things surprising in the so young. Will you," she demanded suddenly, totally changing the subject, "be my maid?" He hastened to inform her, vehemently, that he would not. "Jobaba hasn't come today," La Clavel continued; "and she wasn't here to dress me for dinner last evening. That is unusual in her: I have a feeling she is not coming back."
"Perhaps she has been murdered in one of the brujos cabildos," Charles suggested. "It is impossible to say where that frenzy stops." A happening quite different, the dancer told him, was in her mind.
"I could never get into the thoughts of Jobaba," she admitted. "And there is very little I miss. I suppose it's the negro. She is like cream, smooth and beautiful to look at, but turned by thunder." If she were going away, Charles reminded her, there were a number of things to be discussed and closed. And she told Charles how a Cuban, ostensibly attached to the national party, but in reality a Spanish secret agent, had been sent into Camagüey. His name was Rimblas.
Charles Abbott repeated that, and memorized such characteristics as La Clavel knew. There was an indefinite stir at the door, a short knock, and he moved to the window as Santacilla entered unceremoniously.
